Why corporate templates don’t work

An interesting thing, corporate templates.

The majority of Word or Powerpoint templates I encounter from our clients fall into two broad classes:

• Those designed by administrative or IT staff, so they’re designed to be easy to use (sort of), but they don’t look good and they rarely reflect the way real people actually work. Or…
• Those designed by designers or ad agencies, so the templates look great, but ordinary people can’t duplicate the examples because they’re not designers, so results based on these templates are usually disappointing (or worse).

Ok, so let’s forget about the first group altogether – well-meaning IT or administrative staff are not who you should be trusting your message to. They have other gifts.

The problem with the second group – templates-by-designers – is that (most) designers will create templates and related guidance for use by other designers, not for ordinary people. Compounding the problem is the curse of knowledge: designers creating the templates know a lot more about creating good-looking slides (for instance) than the people who will be using the templates.

Embed more knowledge.

One solution to this problem is to create richer templates that include much more detailed examples that people can use as-is, instead of abstract guidance.

If you are a designer creating templates for other people to use, include as many examples as you can where people can literally plug in their content (words, numbers, movies, etc.). Instead of just a single generic chart on a PP slide, include one page each for a column, stacked column, bar, stacked bar, line, area, doughnut, pie, etc. Not only a bullet slide (if you must), but also a two-column layout, a title, a few image-only slides with real images people could use, a table, maybe a few different table examples, a photo with a caption, a movie, an animation, etc. And don’t be satisfied with the Powerpoint default layouts – is that really what you would do? Get rid of the layouts that don’t make sense for your situation. You know your users, if they’re not going to use a vertical slide master, then delete it from the template.

If you are hiring someone to create a template(s) for you, be an advocate for your users and test things until they break. Use the tools yourself: if you receive a template that is difficult to use or doesn’t make sense, push back and keep pushing back until you get something that you can actually use in many different situations. Good designers will relish this challenge (no, really), they will see a committed client who cares about getting it right, about solving the real problem. And you’ll get a better result.

There are companies that get this. I’ve seen examples of well-done corporate PP templates that had over 30 slides, where people could literally copy their information into a template’s slide layout. And don’t confuse this with those idiotic presenting bad news templates that come bundled with PP, I mean files that have many different format examples for thinking people to duplicate and use to better illustrate their own well-considered presentation.

Of course, there is another approach: just turn the projector off.

May 2012 Update:

Since I published this in July 2010, I’ve had additional thoughts and revised some of my recommendations. See my newer post.